Before I started teaching social media at the New Design University in St. Pölten, it was clear to me I wanted to have a small comprehensive project in my portfolio. I wanted to create something anyone could copy if they wanted to. Something that just needed a smartphone and a good idea for it to happen: that’s how I came up with the Vienna coffee guide before also creating one for Berlin to decrease the costs of printing.

In March, I published my fifth Kickstarter project. It was a fifth successful project (sixth if I count running one for Anitar last September).

While it seemed easy to raise money for the Vienna guide, it wasn’t all that simple with the guide of Berlin’s café scene. One thing I have learned from running all these projects is it doesn’t matter how one reaches the goal. What matters is that one does.

If a Kickstarter project doesn’t work as expected, one must come up with a plan B, a plan C, and at least a plan D. At the end of the day, what matters is raising the money necessary in the time one determined before going live.

That’s what made the project a success. Not the project itself, but instead the ability to improvise when nothing goes as planned. Which is to say, it hardly ever goes as planned.

What I’m especially excited about is that because I already had the Berlin guides printed, I can now play around with Etsy, DaWanda, and IndieGoGo on demand too because I finally have a product to sell.

Those two Kickstarter projects, and especially making sure to ship them on time, were by far not the main projects I worked on this past month. I kicked off March with a workshop in London organized by Hanzo for one of their clients.

When I agreed to teaching social media, I didn’t realize how much time I’d spend talking about different business models. Originally, I just planned to show my students how to frame creative projects, use the available tools to materialize ideas, plus how to use social to position oneself online.

But then to be able to know how to use the internet as a tool, one must also understand how one is instrumentalized as a product and how different companies monetize one’s attention, time, and data, so we got to talk a lot about propaganda, advertising, and how different companies make money. Which made the class very broad, but to me, also interesting to prepare to discuss these issues before standing in front of 36 pairs of curious eyes. Quite an experience!

And before I forget to mention this, every student got to work on their own creative project, which you can see by looking up the hashtag #nducreates on Instagram.

Meanwhile at Veganz, I needed to communicate how I wanted to get involved with the company in the future. About six weeks in, I knew I didn’t see myself as the Head of Marketing for longer than the originally agreed upon three months. It’s a lot of admin and not so much creative work, and as I always say, one should be doing something in the day-to-day one is actually excited about. At this moment, hiring, firing, and restructuring a team is not necessarily it.

After setting up internal communication processes and project management structure by introducing the team to Trello, I began working on the campaigns for the entire year of 2018. I’ll write a case study about my work for Veganz and publish it on this website some time soon. At least for now I can mention that we ran Beautiful Vegan Easter as a brand collaboration with Bio:Végane in March and prepared the campaign Vegan Lunch Box together with Patrick Bolt and EcoLunchBox for April.

My main focus at Veganz this past month – and I know I already mentioned a lot I worked on – was to find a replacement for myself, hire a new Creative Director, and also two additional translators to professionalize the communication output. With Moritz Möller, Martin Petersen, Justine Coquel, and Richard Block, I do believe I’ve fulfilled that mission quite successfully.

I’m very excited to see what April will bring, given I’m transferring back to a more flexible, remote lifestyle. I’m currently booked out until mid-May, but can work on smaller projects here and there. Please send me an email if you need anything!

The other day I got up at 4am. I needed to wait for my flatmate to finish his morning routine. He usually gets up so early, which sometimes wakes me up too. Whenever I fall asleep early the night before, it’s almost impossible for me to get back to sleep. (Now you know how I sometimes manage to work on so many projects simultaneously.)

I sat up in my bed and logged into the Google Doc with all the text I wrote for the Berlin guide. I noticed Diana started editing them. Within a couple of minutes, I implemented all the texts into the Kickstarter page before taking Orion out, then cooking her breakfast rice. She was pleased. She’d finally get breakfast earlier than usual. Eating is her favorite pass time. Once we were both ready, I jumped on the subway and went all across town to Wilmersdorf. I’m glad dogs can't talk back and are just happy to follow along.

At this point, I still needed to take ten pictures for the Berlin guide and do so within a week if I wanted to meet the deadline I set for myself for the Vienna guide. (At the time, I had no idea I’d print a guide about Berlin too.)

Of the ten places I had on my list to photograph, Benedict is the only one that opens before 8:30am.

One thing is sure: Berlin’s not for early birds.

The reason I decided to create a second Kickstarter project so quickly after publishing the one about Vienna is because I didn’t want to compromise on the quality of the paper I printed these guides on. It’s common for printing to become cheaper the more one prints, so instead of printing more of the Vienna guides, I simply decided to create another limited edition and print a guide about Berlin’s cafés.

Those who follow me on Instagram know I’ve probably spent more time in Berlin’s cafés than Vienna’s coffee houses in the past couple of years anyway.

I’ve already commissioned MOO to print both guides. That also means I’ll be shipping both sets simultaneously. This second project is for me to refinance the printing I’ve already paid for.